Confused yet? The difficulty doesn't end there: there are tones in Chinese dialects. Hence Grandmother (mah mah) is pronounced in a lower tone while Mother (mah mah) is pronounced either in a higher tone, or the first word is pronounced in a lower tone and the second word is pronounced in a higher tone. A lot of Cantonese in Hong Kong call your parents Daddy and Mommy (they tend to pronounced this "ma mi") or in my family, we call dad "ba ba" and mom "ma mi." If you think this is tough think about this:

Thank you so much for your prompt reply. With regards to grandparents I had seen on one site that it said mah mah and yeh yeh but on another it said ah mah and ah yeh and this is what my husband thought that it was. Can you explain the difference please. My husband's family family were Jiangmen - I don't know if this makes a difference at all.

Basically, ye ye and ah ye are the same. Ye ye is more endearing, ah ey is more vulgar (not necessarily in a rude, disrespectful way, though; a lot of times Cantonese people use rude-sounding words as an expression of friendliness and informality -- being informal shows that you are really good friend with someone. This is kind of like American kids using cuss words in everyday conversation to keep it informal.)

Notice that ye ye, ah ye, etc, are not formal titles. But I don't want to confuse you anymore so I won't tell you what the formal titles are =). I guess you can say it's like grandmother is formal and grandma is informal. Cantonese almost never use formal titles, unless when there is not differentiation between formal and informal, or if the formal version is more popularly used.

Jiangmen people are Sei-yap Cantonese. I thought they call paternal grandfather as "ah gong" and paternal grandmother as "ah ho". We call father's (older)brothers' wives "miao" and (younger)brothers' wives "sum".

How about the others of Sei Yap family members (since the terms are different from Guangzhou) ?

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the liedeliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. - JFK

One thing is for certain: the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas. - Neil deGrasse Tyson

It seems that most people agree that grandfather can be either Ah Yeh or Yeh Yeh and that grandmother can be Ah Mah or Mah Mah. This seems to be agreed whether it is Cantonese or the Sze Yap dialect.

The difference seems to be in the great grandfather and great grandmother (on the paternal side) and it seems to change as to whether it is Cantonese or the Sze Yap dialect.

Am I right in thinking that most people think that it should be Taai Yeh and Taai Mah.

If there is still disagreement would anyone on the forum know where I could get a correct answer or is it one of those things that are interchangeable such as in English we would use Grandma, Grandmother, Nana, Gran and they all mean the same.